p with he could not find it. The hatchet had melted
its way down through the frozen molasses, until it came to the bottom
of the barrel, inside, and there it stayed until all the sweet stuff
was chopped out in the spring."

The children laughed at this funny story, and a little later they
began skating around. They had races among themselves. Hal raced with
Charlie, and once he won, and once Charlie did. But Mab, who raced
with Mary, won both times. Mab was becoming a good skater, you see.

And such fun as it was eating lunch in the log cabin. The little
building kept off the cold wind, and Daddy Blake built a fire on the
old hearth. Hot chocolate was made; and how everyone did enjoy it!

After lunch they all went skating again. As they glided around a
little point of land, that stuck out in the lake, Hal, who was skating
on ahead, cried out, in a surprised voice:

"Oh, look at the men and horses on the ice! What are they doing?"

"Cutting ice," said Daddy Blake. "Come, we will go over and see how it
is done," and away they all skated to where the men were gathering the
harvest of ice, just as farmers gather in their harvest of hay and
grain.

CHAPTER XI

A COLD HOUSE

"Will you please show these children how you cut ice, and store it
away, so you can sell it when the hot summer days come?" asked Daddy
Blake of one of the many men who, with horses and strange machinery,
were gathered in a little sheltered cove of the lake.

"To be sure I will," the man answered. "Just come over here and you
will see it all."

"Oh, but look at the water!" cried Mab, as she pointed to a place
where the ice had been cut, and taken out, leaving a stretch of black
water.

"I won't let you fall in that," promised the man. "The ice is so thick
this year, on account of the cold, that you could go close to the edge
of the hole, and the ice would not break with you. See, there is a man
riding on an ice cake just as if it were a raft of wood."

"Oh, so he is!" cried Hal, as he saw a man, with big boots and a long
pole, standing on a glittering white ice-raft. The man was poling
himself along in the water, just as Daddy Blake had pushed the boat
along when he was spearing eels in the Summer.

"He looks just like a picture I saw, of a Polar bear on his cake of
ice, up at the North Pole," spoke Charlie, "only he isn't a bear, of
course," the little boy added quickly, thinking the man might think he
was calling him names. The